"As the South wind stopped, and only a light Northern breeze could be felt, we invited Sergio Veiga to come with us for the idea was to head down South to Santa Maria and its pristine reefs…
Sergio is almost the father of spearfishing in the Southern area, now in his mid-fifty’s, he was the one who teached most of the younger generation of Mozambican spearos …professional hunter, writer, painter and spearfisherman, he is the one who best knows the Southern waters and so was our skipper for the day…
Passing Hell’s Gate, (St. Maria channel, it’s named like that because every year lots of boat capsize there), we turned South and after a few miles, Sergio stopped the boat and signaled us…it was time to dive…
The goal here where the River Snapper0s and huge parrotfish that dwell in this waters…Emiliano was the first to go down, and has he checked a small cave beneath us, I waited patiently.. .Emi caught a Tasselfish and told me it was full of them…I came down trough the other entrance and nailed another nice one too…after giving it to Sergio, I asked for the 90cm gun in order to get further into the cave…another dive for Emiliano, and another Tassel…my turn to go down…as I reach the entrance, I gently go in and head to the left corner, deep down I can see the head of a nice River Snapper…I aim and shoot…coming out releasing line from the reel with a firm grip, in order not to give an inch, otherwise it will take the spear throughout the whole cave, making the extraction a nightmare…
Emi dives to see what I’ve shot but to he’s surprise a Potato Bass grab´s the speared fish and tries to take it away…Emi pokes the “taxman” in the head and it runs away…cumming up he tells me that I have not one, but two snappers speared, a double on the same shot…we laugh for a while and after a couple of dives the fish were on board.
After this, Sergio took us to another area, and on the first dive, Emi spots a nice Rubberlip entering a small hole on the reef…he dives again to inspect and comes back saying it runned away…nevertheless I dive to inspect the cave as well, and in a small crevice on the corner isee the mid section of the body of a large River Snapper…I back down and leave the 130 gun on the entrance…at the surface Sergio gives the 90cm gun and its time for another dive…has I reach the other entrance, the Snapper runs and hides deep inside…it took me four dives to have it on sight…hiding behind a small rock inside, I wait for it to show his head, and fire a straight shot to the head…coming back up I can sense the fish struggling in the reel line…five more dives just to see where it was, and to realize it would not come out trough that entrance…the solution was to shoot it again trough the opposite entrance, but even so, I had to use the spear extractor on my knife to rotate the shaft in order to take it out…45 minutes after the first shot it was finally out…on board Emi said I had another record, but I wasn’t sure of the record weight for that specie…
Later when we arrived, Mr. Nelson was kind once again to open the fish shop and to attend the weighting, along with my wife and Ivan as witnesses. The measuring took place two days after, and the fish remains frozen as with the previous ones…
Safe diving to you all…"
